At first, it was easy. Tom and I supported each other in our work, shared the domestic drudgery equally, and always seemed to have time for each other and for fun. Life was not only good, it felt fair.
Then we had a son. And then a daughter. Like that frog in the science experiment who has the sense to jump out of a pot of boiling water but, plopped into tepid water, he doesn’t notice it gradually heating to boiling point until he is cooked, our division of labour through the years steadily grew laughably, ridiculously, irrationally, frustratingly unfair.
Forget about having it all, it felt like I was doing it all.
“You are not the Lion King!” I would occasionally yell, usually after finding myself scrubbing an oven hood so clogged with grease that the smoke alarms wouldn’t stop screeching while he watched TV. “You don’t get to laze around while I do all the work!”
He’d shoot back that my standards were too high. “You’re just like Marge Simpson. When her house was burning down, she found dirty dishes in the sink and stood there washing them,” he’d say.
When it came to the kids, I took them to all their medical appointments. Tom didn’t even know where the dentist’s office was. Without question, I was the one who stayed at home or rearranged my work schedule when they were sick. While Tom slept soundly or was off at work, I was the one still up at 2am baking cupcakes for the school or wrapping Christmas presents.
It had reached the point where I didn’t want to feel so hostile and resentful all the time, so I made a weird, lopsided bargain: I would do most of the child, house and garden work, taxes and drudge stuff. All I asked for in return, I told Tom, was this: “I just want you to notice – and say thank you.”
Our wildly out of whack division of labour is a big reason why my life felt as if it had splintered into unsatisfying, distracted and fragmented scraps that I called time confetti.
From “How my husband and I finally achieved equality at home” by Bridget Schulte in The Guardian. (Thanks to Sara for the link).
This article is a very good description of how inequality creeps into a relationship but in spite of the title, a less clear description of how you correct it. Yes, you take turns at all the domestic work and yes, you spend more time connecting, but how? How did you get there? How did you unpick such entrenched patterns of behaviour? How do you monitor it without that becoming someone’s task, too? How do you get everyone equally invested in the outcome when some were clearly benefiting from the old unfair way of doing things?
But anyway, I really just want to take note here of a couple of things in this article. One, I always find it amusing to hear the unique terms couples invent for describing one another’s annoying behaviours so, I enjoyed ‘Lion King’ immeasurably and two, how recognisable is that deal she made to swallow inequality if her sacrifice could at least be acknowledged by her partner and kids? And how devastating is it when you discover there is no appreciation?
Yes, this is what I’m living at the moment. It took longer to get there because my partner is great with little kids. Now that the kids are older, he is a terrible role model for housework and who do you imagine the teenage/20something kids are imitating? To their credit, they’re getting better, but I think he’s getting worse. I don’t think he has touched a bathroom for 3 years.
His excuse is always work, but I’m employed fulltime – and he works alongside single mums and other women who go home and do the second shift.
Once I am no longer tending to an elderly dog, I may take a LOT of long service leave in furrin parts as a toe in the water to letting them wake up to me not being around.
That sounds like a great idea Helen. If you are missing your puppeh you might as well be doing it from the comfort of a poolside cabana cocktail in hand, or kayaking down a river as scrubbing the shower. You will let me know if you need someone to carry the bags won’ t you?
I think she does explain how. I may see it more clearly because I lived through the same process. Reflection, conversation, active listening – basic, solid, communication skills. Fundamentally, deeply understanding that your partner’s feelings are real and valid. Checking and questioning your assumptions. Giving up the idea that one person “wins” an argument.
It is fundamentally unfair that one person – usually the woman in a het relationship – ends up keeping track of the division of labor. That’s the legacy of patriarchy. It’s true for us – I was the one who pushed the conversation and kept it going and came back to it, over and over again. It took me six years after our daughter was born to realize that I was earning twice as much as my husband and that I was paid based on my activity (not straight salary) and I was STILL the one who was doing all the doctor’s and dentist’s appointments and taking calls from the school. So I pushed, and he listened, and he realized that no one in his office cared if he took an hour off from his workday to take the kid to the dentist. (He got lavishly praised, which is a whole ‘nother feminist rant).
This may have been easier for us since our daughter was adopted, so there was no biological reason why I was the “default” parent even when she was a newborn – although I stayed home for a while because of job stuff, and I did default more than I wanted to.
You and I have discussed this before. (sorry, I can’t do links) http://twowomenblogging.blogspot.com/2011/05/no-really-why-by-jay.html I guess this comment is the same answer I gave three years ago.
My heart roared when she made that deal, “He’ll forget in a week!” Oh, the sacrifices we make sometimes.
Reblogged this on Business and Woman and commented:
Hur delar du och din partner upp arbete hemma?
I also think she does describe the how (more nitty gritty might be nice, but I guess that’s what you have to hire the consultant for) – but note that this only even happened when her kids were, apparently, in their teens. Kids old enough to do their own chores, as opposed to kids who need you to remember each of their 7 things as well as your own, require a whole other kind of strategising. (Not saying it wouldn’t be possible to achieve equality at an earlier stage, if sufficiently determined… but who has the energy to have that fight when you’re chronically sleep deprived?)
“how recognisable is that deal she made to swallow inequality if her sacrifice could at least be acknowledged by her partner and kids? And how devastating is it when you discover there is no appreciation?”
So, so horribly true. My husband complained recently that he didn’t “feel appreciated.” I pointed out that I made an effort to notice every time he did any kind of housework–washed a load of laundry, made the kids breakfast, etc– and always thanked him for it (more “mental labor” for me to worry about.) What else did appreciation consist of if not noticing someone’s work and letting them know that you value it?
His response? “Oh, I don’t care about that kind of thing. I guess I just meant I want more physical affection.”
Maybe I should have known. If he did care about ‘that kind of thing,’ he would be conscious of the work I was doing and express gratitude for it, like I made an effort to do for him.
We need to do the kind of work the author and her husband did to work through these problems, but I know that the initiative and effort would fall mainly on me and it’s just more mental labor I don’t have it in me to take on right now.
Yessss, lots of blokes seem to have fallen for the ‘if you do a little bit of housework she will feel like sex again’ idea when in fact it is more like ‘if you take on your share of the load she will have time to rest and have leisure time in which to start thinking about the fun you used to have together…’
I feel like my intense laziness & lack of caring when I fail at things (yay raised with untreated ADHD! I have a lot of experience with failure) has really helped with our division of labor. Some shit does not get done. Like, I abdicated communicating with his family. So it turns out we’re not going to a birthday party out of town next weekend after all, it got moved and he didn’t hear until today. Which actually doesn’t affect me because the party wasn’t on the calendar so I scheduled a night out with my friend…
There are costs. The house is dirty. We eat junk food. No thank you notes are written. The house is always half constructed. Only the bare necessities get done, sometimes. Or the bare necessities plus the parts one of us like to do. But there isn’t that hideous resentment between us, at least. And I tell myself, all those failures – hey at least we’re not gentrifying the neighborhood (it is sort of gentrifying around us these days) and we’re giving all the other parents we know someone to think “well at least we’re not as bad as them…”
Yeah, colour me skeptical. I see a fundamental lack of respect and sense of entitlement from Tom that’s not going to be overcome by a bit of talking. It’s not like Brigid didn’t try to work this out with him: “You are not the Lion King” and “I’d asked DeGroot to work with Tom and me because I had run out of ideas.” So he was, you know, ignoring her, and he only acknowledges the problem, his problem, when someone else says it? Why couldn’t Tom have just listened to Brigid and taken her concerns seriously, and saved themselves the money they paid DeGroot?
And look at the way Brigid frames things:
“To help people like Tom and I get unstuck, she asks couples to pause, to dedicate regular time to what she calls “active listening” – without judgment – to each other to sort through . . .”
The “both sides” framing, as if they are equally culpable. But he is the problem; he is the one not doing his share. She takes the career hit, because he doesn’t want to. And then how she rationalizes it, by exaggerating her role: “Always assuming that if people saw a messy house, I, the negligent housewife, would be blamed.” That is a correct assumption; when people see a messy house, they blame the woman. “Always deferring to his career as more important.” So it’s her fault because she she didn’t stand up for herself, when he has the weight of societal expectations backing him, and she’ll get, “bad mother, putting her career ahead of the kids”? In addition to being paid less than a man? Because the pay hierarchy, in descending order, is man with kids, man without kids, woman without kids, woman with kids.
“. . . (F)inally becoming equal partners and sharing the load more fairly would free us from our usual crouch of anger and defensiveness. . .” What the heck’s Tom got to be angry and defensive about? Because he was being asked to step up, be a grown-up, and do his share? Because Brigid didn’t say it to him in the right way (the right way being, of course, coming from someone else)?
As to why Tom wasn’t grateful, Brigid should read more <a href="http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/love_honor_thank"Hochschild:
“Arlie Hochschild’s theory of “the economy of gratitude” explains why under-performers often aren’t grateful for their partner’s efforts and don’t pitch in their fair share. Hochschild argues that, in relationships, individuals offer each other “gifts,” which are something extra, beyond what is expected. Therefore, if the laundry (or trash, or dishes, or all of the above) is defined as “yours,” then your partner is unlikely to feel gratitude toward you for doing it. After all, you are just doing what you are “supposed” to do, what you are “so much better” at doing. In fact, he may argue, since the undone task bothers you, you aren’t doing it for him, but for yourself. ”
Finally, more Hochschild, a depressing glimpse at the rationalizations women make when their partner refuses to negotiate an equitable arrangement. Tom may be helping out more, but he and Brigid have not achieved equality at home.
I must agree. (Quite pessimistic today about this topic.)
I’ll try again on that first Hochschild link.
And, not having entirely squeezed out all my complaining on that article, I’d also like to challenge this statement made by the author:
“Both men and women instinctively know, and social science research is finding, that he would be far more punished in the workplace for flexible work than she would.”
I think it only appears that way because some of the penalty for women is front-loaded. I’m going to pull some numbers out of the air to illustrate, and yes, the example will be a gross over-simplification and generalization. Let’s say a company has 4 of the same entry-level positions open and hires 2 men @ $60K each and two women @ $50K each. We know this happens a lot, men being seen as more competent and being offered more pay, even when a woman has the same qualifications. Some of the bias is due to a simple “men are better” perception, but it also ties in with the belief that women will (or should) go off to raise children and thus won’t be as committed or as productive an employee. So already, both women have paid a penalty on hiring.
It’s also quite likely that bias will favour the men in promotions, and they will advance up the company ladder quicker, widening the pay gap. So let’s say a few years have passed and the men are up to $75K, the women $60K. And now let’s say one of the men and one of the women have children, and they both are involved parents requiring flexible work schedules. Both of their careers stall, and a few years later, they haven’t seen their pay move. The man and woman without children, meanwhile, are still moving up. He’s at $100K, she’s at $75K.
So, when the claim is made that a man is punished more than a woman for flexible work, is that because they look at the two men and see the $25K differential, and compare it to the women with their $15K differential, and conclude that the punishment for being an involved mother is $15K, and the punishment for being an involved father is $25K?
Or have they found that men on the daddy track make less than women on the mommy track? Somehow, I doubt it.
Golly, that’s so much my story! That exact line about my high standards too. It made my blood boil for years. My story differs in a way that you sound like you might be familiar with – I never got appreciation. I also offered to give up equality for money – ie if he earnt more money I would work a little less and make peace with doing all the unpaid labour. However my partner didn’t think this was necessary either, so I left. And went on to be happier doing everything by myself, than I was doing 98% of everything with him dragging his feet.